✔ Recognition and rewards are powerful motivators that increase employee morale, engagement, and retention. A rewards program helps staff feel valued and acknowledged for their efforts, contributing to greater job satisfaction.

✔ According to leadership best practices, positive reinforcement and acknowledging achievements improve team performance and create a culture of appreciation and support.

✔ The nurse manager plays a key role in employee development and motivation by implementing strategies that align with intrinsic motivators, such as feeling respected, competent, and appreciated in the workplace.

Incorrect Options:

• "A. Allow LPNs and CNAs to perform tasks beyond their scope of practice."
• Unsafe and unethical—violates legal and professional boundaries, increases liability, and does not promote long-term job satisfaction.
• "C. Hire additional staff so individual workloads are lessened."
• May help with workload, but hiring decisions are typically administrative-level decisions, and won’t address the need for recognition or motivation directly.
• "D. Improve the working conditions of the unit by investing in ergonomic chairs."
• A helpful environmental improvement, but not a direct motivator for addressing dissatisfaction or low morale.

✔ Clients with anorexia nervosa are at high risk for life-threatening complications, especially fluid and electrolyte imbalances like hypokalemia, hyponatremia, and dehydration, which can lead to cardiac arrhythmias or organ failure.

✔ The nurse’s top clinical responsibility is to prioritize physiological stability. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, basic life-sustaining needs such as hydration and electrolyte balance take precedence over psychological or emotional goals.

✔ Once the client’s physical condition is stabilized, the nurse can then shift focus to emotional support, group therapy, and self-esteem building, which are crucial but not immediately life-saving.

Incorrect Options:

• "A. Encouraging the patient to attend group therapy"
• Important for long-term psychological healing, but not the immediate priority in a physically compromised state.
• "B. Monitoring for thoughts of self-harm."
• Always necessary, but fluid and electrolyte imbalance poses a more immediate physical threat in anorexia nervosa.
• "D. Fostering feelings of self-respect"
• Part of long-term therapeutic goals, but not a priority during acute medical instability.

✔ Encouraging the potential in all staff reflects cultural humility and inclusivity, which are essential for empowering a diverse team and promoting mutual respect and equity in the workplace.

✔ Being conscious of cultural interaction dynamics helps the nurse manager identify power imbalances, biases, or misunderstandings, allowing them to foster effective communication and minimize cultural conflict.

✔ Conducting a cultural self-assessment allows the manager to reflect on their own biases, values, and beliefs, which is a key step in becoming culturally competent and creating an inclusive environment.

Incorrect Options:

• "A. Assuming the thoughts and behaviors of individuals based on their race or ethnicity"
• This reflects stereotyping, which undermines cultural sensitivity and leads to miscommunication and exclusion.
• "E. Fostering unity by imposing American values upon all staff members"
• This approach disregards cultural diversity and promotes cultural insensitivity, which can result in alienation and decreased staff morale.

✔ A sound and effective approach to appraising research involves evaluating how well the study was designed and conducted in accordance with methodological standards specific to that research type (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, RCTs, etc.).

✔ Nurses using evidence-based practice must assess validity, reliability, and applicability of findings—not just the study type or sample size—ensuring appropriate integration into clinical decision-making.

✔ This approach reflects the nurse’s responsibility to use critical thinking and professional judgment to determine whether the study findings are credible, relevant, and transferable to practice.

Incorrect Options:

• "B. Select only studies with a sample size of at least 100 people."
• Sample size is important, but quality matters more; small studies can still be rigorous and valid, depending on the design.
• "C. Discard systematic reviews and meta-analyses since they are the weakest form of evidence."
• This is incorrect and misleading—these are among the strongest levels of evidence, as they synthesize data from multiple studies.
• "D. Accept only studies that use a randomized controlled trial design."
• RCTs are strong but not always applicable, especially for qualitative research questions or when studying rare conditions.

✔ Engaging staff members in the process of implementing evidence-based practice (EBP) promotes buy-in, shared decision-making, and ownership, which are critical for successful and sustainable change.

✔ The nurse manager’s role includes facilitating collaboration and team participation, making frontline staff feel valued and empowered, which increases EBP adoption and compliance.

✔ Soliciting staff input helps identify relevant clinical questions, barriers to implementation, and practical insights that improve the quality and feasibility of the EBP program on the unit.

Incorrect Options:

• "A. Identifying patients with extended lengths of stay."
• This may be part of a quality improvement effort, but it’s not directly related to initial EBP program development.
• "B. Reviewing specialty organization guidelines."
• Important for selecting best practices, but this comes after establishing unit-specific needs through staff input.
• "C. Conducting a review of adverse events and incident reports."
• Useful for risk management, but not a primary strategy for initiating evidence-based change.